Natural Causes
by Rose Stetson
Summary: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR KING AND COUNTRY! Helen visits her patient in the infirmary with a deadly secret to tell him and a request to go along with it.


**Natural Causes**

Helen paused outside the infirmary, her chest tightening with each breath. "Calm down, Helen," she murmured to herself. "Excitement will only aggravate your condition."

It was ironic, really. A year or so ago, she would have given everything to find herself in this position – dying – and now, she found herself with conflicted emotion. Death would finally end the pain of losing Ashley. It would finally end the lifelong battle she'd had with herself about whether or not John Druitt was too dangerous to be left alive, let alone whether or not she should keep him or the child she'd frozen for a hundred years in her life.

She coughed again, the blood splattering over her fist. She reached for a pocket handkerchief and quickly wiped her hand and her lip. She couldn't let John find out about her condition by mere deduction. No, she had to tell him. It was the responsible thing to do.

She opened the door to the infirmary, having put the handkerchief away in her pocket.

"Helen, you are an absolute miracle worker!" John announced, a small piece of himself restored to the murderous eyes he'd worn for so long. "Mere hours in your care, and I am restored to my former state of health."

She didn't even try to muster a smile. "I'm glad the treatments worked."

He looked over at her from where he buttoned his shirt. "You know, I was serious when I said you should take better care of yourself." He said, studying her closely.

"No time for that now." She protested, shaking her head.

With all of this talk of the Five, she could almost hear what James would say after taking a single look at her as she stood right now. "Helen, are you all right?" And she could almost see what he was thinking in his eyes – pale, withdrawn, leaning the slightest bit forward as if she's in pain, more careful and deliberate about each movement than usual...

"Helen?"

She was pulled from her thoughts as John took her hands in his own and searched in her eyes. "Helen..."

"John."

He'd looked so helpless, lying there on cot, and she'd felt so tired of the dance they'd perfected over the last century of running from one another and then to one another and then away from one another again.

Ashley. Ashley had changed all that – even for a brief moment.

"What is this?" John asked, interrupting her thoughts once more. He held the soiled handkerchief in his hands as fear appeared in his eyes. "Helen, what is this?"

She sighed, softly. "I won't even bother to ask how you found that," she murmured, quietly.

"Helen," he pleaded, looking into her eyes as he clasped her hands in his own. "Please..."

"In following Adam through one of his time portals," Helen began slowly. "I was exposed to a great deal of radiation, and as a result, each of my major organs has begun to shut down." She swallowed before she continued in a strangely matter-of-fact tone. "I'm dying, John."

"And this...blood?" He asked, looking back down at his hand.

She looked down.

"Then, it's already begun," he managed, his voice strained.

Her jaw tensed as she saw the tears moistening his eyes. She couldn't give in and allow her own tears to fall. To do so would ruin everything she'd tried to accomplish in maintaining at least a monocle of professional detachment from each of the people under her roof.

"I need to know," he began after a moment. "I need to know if this is why you finally allowed yourself to lie in my embrace after more than a century."

"I didn't know about the test results until after I'd brought you back." Helen said, choosing her words carefully.

"But you knew," he said, softly. "Somewhere inside you, you knew."

Her gaze fell to the ground. Yes, she knew. She hadn't become a highly successful doctor over the past century and a half without knowing when something in her body had changed.

She felt the tightening of her chest again, and she couldn't help but take a wheezing breath as she faltered slightly.

John's strong arms caught her by the waist and supported her easily.

"John," she breathed. She coughed, splattering blood onto her fist again. John returned the handkerchief to her, and she cleaned herself up again. She looked up at him with a long-lost pleading look in her eye. "Please, John...if the time comes..." She trailed off, clearly ashamed of what she was asking. Finally, she looked up. "Make it look like an accident or a natural end." She swallowed. "And then," she touched his chest. "I hope the beast will be appeased." She looked back up at him. "Even the entity you carry within you is fixated on me. Your victims – they've always either looked like me or been somehow associated with the Sanctuary..."

His jaw tensed as he recalled each and every life he'd ever snuffed out. She was right. The victims had all either looked like her or been touched somehow by her work. "Why me?" He managed after a long moment.

She looked up at him with a sober look in her eye. "You're the only one who could."

"Then there is no cure?"

Helen tensed, pulling out of John's embrace. "Adam..." her voice held a fair bit of disdain as she said his name. "Insists that if we show him the map of the city that my father sent me, he can bring us there, and we will be healed."

"Both of you."

She nodded. "I don't trust him. He's been playing me from the start."

"And the only way to keep him from winning is to release yourself to a perverse killer?" John asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I won't have you excite yourself, John." She said, turning to walk away.

"Then, what would you have me do?" He demanded, pulling her back to face him.

"It's not as if you haven't tried it before," she said, softly.

"Yes, but I've never succeeded, Helen. I've never really wanted to. I've stopped this creature inside me before it could ever really..." He paused, almost unable to say the words. "I've done a great many things in my life that I wasn't proud of, Helen." He swallowed. "Don't ask me to do this. Don't ask me to add your death to the million pains I regret inflicting upon you."

The tears came, despite her protests, and she looked up at him, hoping that her final argument would touch his heart with the depths of her seriousness. "After Ashley died, I hoped and prayed that I would find some cure for my longevity. I thought I'd found one, but it turned out to be something other than what I thought it would be – an apocalypse in a bottle instead of a mere elixir to return me to the way I was born to be." She felt the tears slip down her cheeks. "John, I've finally found it, and if it weren't for he knowledge that my father is very possibly in mortal danger, I would let my illness run its course." She swallowed. "If there is an afterlife of any kind, I will be reunited with Ashley, and if there is not, at least the pain will be done."

"How many times have I tried to end my suffering?" John asked, quietly. "And each time, you revive me."

"God help me, John Druitt," she began slowly. "I can't live without you."

"Helen Magnus, I want you to fight this illness," he said, passionately. "Because I will not let you die by my own hand or by anything else." He swallowed. "I, too, can't live without you. Even when I'm on the other side of the world, the simple knowledge that you are there, and that you are relatively safe from harm, is the only thing that keeps me going."

"What if I'm not strong enough to fight it?" She finally admitted, her will breaking for a moment as she stood before him. "What if I'm not smart enough to cure it? What if there's some third option to death that I've never considered before – not a reunion with my daughter or quiet nothingness that ends my suffering, but something altogether different?"

The tears were coming more quickly, and John stood awkwardly across from her for a moment before he took a step toward her, wrapped her up in his arms as he had done back in their days at Oxford, and allowed her to cry as he held her in the familiar comfort of his arms.


End file.
